


Ledge

by jelegia



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: Drugs, Endeavour Morse Whump, Hurt Endeavour Morse, Hurt/Comfort, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:15:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27661223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jelegia/pseuds/jelegia
Summary: Morse is lucky to have people looking out for him.written for whumptober.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 22





	Ledge

**Author's Note:**

> (very late) Whumptober addition. I had this in my drafts for months, I guess I'll never be totally happy with it. Posting it anyway because it's the end of 2020, so what the hell.

He had not planned to kill another one this soon.

He had been so careful and smart about the whole thing. Always pick a loner, no one will miss them. Wait a couple of months until the next one, no one will see a pattern. If you can, somebody that lives far away, no one will track the body back to you.

Until now, everything had worked out smoothly, all six of the murders hab been left unsolved, Two of them he was especially proud of, they had not even involved the police for more than a moment. Once he had injected some junkie with an overdose, the second time he had mixed up the pills in some old guys apartment. No one had even bothered to look further into it.

The last case had not been that much different, sure, there would be an investigation, but nothing for him to be concerned about. They would never find him.

And it bothered him.

He was not an idiot. He did no want to get caught and got to prison, but on the other hand, being as careful as he was, he was safe and anynomous. The people weren't scared of him, they didn't know he existed. The police did not grow more and more desperate because they could not catch him. They were not looking for a serial killer at all. It was going to be another "natural causes" or "no foul play".

Until one hour ago. He knew he should berate himself for being so voyeristic, but he needed to go back to his last crime scene, to see the police maybe even some other bystanders, horrified but also fascinated by his work.

When he showed up in the evening, he was disapointed to see nobody standing outside, no police cars, no press. It was late november, it had gone dark soon, the air was cold and the dryness was starting to bite into the skin of his face.

Furious, at himself and his carelessness as much as at the police and their incompetence, he walked by a black Jaguar parked right in front of the building.

__

As a police man, one had to be calm and composed, even in dangerous situations. It made sense, but it had never been easy on him. His mother had told him how he was a sensitive boy.

They had told him he was too soft. It didn't matter who they were, because pretty much everyone had told him that. And he could not for the life of him remember who it had been, the last person that had said something like this to him.

Thursday had never said that to him. Quite the opposite, actually. He had told him to stop acting like nothing had happened after he had been shot, he had stood up for him many times. He apprechiated Morse for his intellect and his empathy. He knew this, he felt it somewhere in his foggy memory, but he could not form the words in his brain. He just wished he would be here now, that much he knew.

He could not follow any train of thought for longer than a few seconds before digressing into panic or despair. It could be the drugs. If he lived through this, they would probably still tell him how he should have been more stoic.

"You are not going anywhere." A hand like cold marble pushed hair back from his forehead.

__

Why did good men have to suffer?

There are men like him, in this life, that give everything, yet they get nothing in return. How long can one stand it?  
He derserved better than this. Nobody deserved this. No family, no wife, just others putting obstacles in your way, staining your name while taking the credit for all your accomplishments. Leaving you to die at the hands of some killer.

There was no corrective justice in this universe, that much he knew. He had seen it many times in his life, but the worst part of it was how powerless he was to change any of it. Yet he tried. In this moment, all he could do was to make sure

"I found him." , he said, barely loud enough to hear it himself. He did not want to startle the man in front of him, who seemed to see anything but what was really there in front of him. His eyelids were heavy, he was fighting to breathe through his nose since his mouth was taped shut. Even with his wrists tied to the armrests of his chair, he was trembling uncontrollably.

He laid hand on one of his arms, trying to pull him back into reality, but there was no reaction. He was staring straigt ahead, not seeing anything that was really there through dilated pupils and eyelashes.

When the duct tape was removed, his eyelids fluttered shut and he took a few irregular breaths.

"Morse!", he shook his shoulder while his detective seargent loosened the tape binding the wrists of the unresponsive man to the chair.

"Sir, we need to get him to a hospital now, he hasn't got much time." Jakes had already taken one of the constables arms und was starting to lift him upwards, waiting for his superior to do the same on the other side.

Did he not think he knew that? He needed something, one word, or a look, to tell him that there was still something in there that recognised him. That understood that they had found him, that they had saved him.

Because if he died in the next few hours, or minutes even, he needed to know that he wasn't alone.

Cursing, he put one hand on Morses' ellbow and one under his armpit and together they raised him from the chair.

__

The silence in the treatment room was starting to calm him down a bit. The doctor had left the room about an hour ago, saying that Morse would be fine, that he had been lucky, that he probably wouldn't even need to go to hospital if he woke up in the next couple of hours. He'd also told him that it had been wise from his young colleague to drive to the Clinic and not to the hospital, because the patient would have most likely died if the had kept driving for longer.

"Minutes." He had told him.

His constabled was laying on the surgery couch of the doctor's room, sleeping like Thursday had seen it many times before. If it hadn't been for the IV drip in the left arm that was draped over his chest, he would look like he did when he had fallen asleep on the couch of his living room. All that seemed like ages ago, now. Mainly because of the many times the lad had gotten himself into trouble since then.

The young mans breathing was becoming louder and more erratic, and sure enough, after a few minutes, he opened his eyes and looked around the unfamiliar exam room.

Morse blinked tiredly a few times. When he spotted Thursday, he furled his eyebrows.

"You're at a Clinic. It was the closest thing we could reach."

"How did you even know to look for me?" Morse obviously didn't remember anything clearly after being drugged.

He did not remember how Jakes and Thursday had found him in the abandoned house, which had been the scene of casualty a day before. How on the ride to the Clinic, he had stopped shaking, and struggling for breath, which had scared the living daylights out of everyone. How Thursday had yelled what the hell he had been doing in that house in the first place.  
"Somebody rang the station about a suspicious person sneaking around the house where the police had found a dead body yesterday. We thought they where talking about you."

Morse looked at his hands, which were resting on his thights. His shirt and his suit trousers were dirty, his wrists bruised. He could barely recall a few sentences that had been said to him. He had been terrified, had been struggling to get air into his lungs.

"He didn't say much to me." Morse looked guilty. He had followed a lead even though he had been told not, to. His colleagues had saved his live, again. And he had nothing to show for it. "He must have surprised me."

"Enough of that, now." Thursday had been mad that Morse had looked further into a case that he had deemed to be a death by natural causes, at first. But he had obviously been right, there was something more to it. And he had already paid enough for his disobedience.

Morse was still staring at his hands, which were trembling a bit again. If he could only remember what the guy looked like, if he had said anything else... but there was only an outline of a man, and a voice that spoke in a tone that changed every time he thought about it.

"We'll get him." Thursday said. It pulled him from the fog of memories and made him look up. After a few years of working with him, Morse was like an open book to the Inspector. There was no point in denying that this incident in particular had gotten to him. He could not remember much of what had happened, but he could feel the panic in his chest every time he tried to relive the last few hours.

"We don't even know who he is. Or what he looks like." Morse responded. He was not in a room with that man anymore, he was here with a person he trusted with his life. But still, he felt like he was not safe. Completely and utterly at a strangers mercy, just waiting for him to end it.

"Well get him." Thursday repeated, his hand touching his constables right upper arm for a few seconds. Before Morse could think about how to react, the Inspector got up and put on his hat.

Morse pushed himself up with his arms, which still felt weak and unstable. But he got to his feet by himself and put on his coat Thursday handed him. Neither of the said a word before they left the room, to go look for the doctor to clear the constable to go home. Before he stepped out of the room however, Thursday looked at him again firmly, letting him know he meant what he'd said.

Morse nodded. 

_We'll get him._


End file.
